Fillers are incorporated into fuser materials to achieve higher thermal conductivity. However, incorporation of thermally conductive fillers into fuser materials results in an increase in hardness of the composite fuser material. Thus it is one limiting factor in developing thermally conductive materials for fuser applications. It is desirable to have particles with very high thermal conductivity in order to impart the highest level of thermal conductivity to the fuser while at the same time balancing the appropriate physical properties of the resulting composite. Aluminum nitride has been used as a thermally conductive filler in fuser materials in the past but is limited by its inherent thermal instability. Composites of fluoroelastomers including aluminum nitride have been found to be thermally instable and the exothermic reaction of crosslinking by-products of the composite has prohibited their use.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome these and other problems of prior art to provide new composite materials with improved thermal conductivity.